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Android might look like a simple system to the average consumer, one quite unlike the laptop/desktop ones and also very limited compared to them. What many people don’t realize is that Android is based on Linux, the most powerful and versatile OS there is. This article will introduce you to the advantages and disadvantages of rooting your Android phone.

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Applicable to even the best budget phones, rooting means gaining “root” access to your phone’s resources. Coming from unix terms, root access is something like Administrator access on Windows machines. The “root” user can make any change they wish on the device running the operational system and can also control how and what the other, less privileged users do. Rooting on Android started out as a semi-accepted practice in the developer world where devs needed the privileges to carry out a variety of tasks. Unlike jailbreaking an iPhone, rooting your Android device does not make it any less legal and is not frowned upon in any way because it is a natural part of developing for Android and also a way for users to improve and shape their experience. Rooting does, however, have certain disadvantages even though it gives you the complete freedom you should have straight out of the box. Even so, certain manufacturers go as far as supporting it officially and releasing tools that aid you in completing the process. However, for many other devices out there, escalating user privileges to the root level is left for the users to figure out. The difficult step in the process is finding out how to hack low-level code modules which include the bootloader – the first thing that happens once you press the power button, and the recovery – a completely separate program on a completely separate memory partition that can be executed by the bootloader.

Once you have complete control of your device and its resources and capabilities, there is a lot to do. Let’s look at the highlights.